Keep it in Perspective as we Remember 9/11

Boy, did I wake up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday. I like to say that life is too short to be in a bad mood. Nonetheless there I was, stuck in the middle of a terrible mood.

My daughter screamed through the night (gotta love those canines charging through her gums), I barely slept, woke up late and skipped breakfast, traffic was a nightmare thanks to the closure of the south split and convention traffic. I can’t get the lead right on one of my BizVoice® stories. The lunch lines were long. A hundred little things have just annoyed me to no end.

In line for lunch, I scrolled through the news headlines and one caught my eye: A story about how people remember 9/11 every year in their own small, but special ways.

And it hit me – it’s been 12 years since 9/11. How did I forget it was coming up? Why did I let all these other little things distract me from remembering?

Twelve years ago, thousands of Americans perished in unimaginable ways. Our world was forever changed.

Like most people who were alive and old enough to remember, I won’t ever forget a single detail of that day. Not the way I drove my brother to school and we listened to the radio and heard the first rumblings of a plane crashing into a building in New York City. Not the way my trigonometry teacher Mr. Kroft leapt out of his seat during our first period trig test and un-muted the television while we stared dumbfounded at images of the Pentagon burning. Not the way we watched the towers crumble into dust during Spanish class. Not the way we cried together as a family and as a nation.

And I won’t ever forget the eerie silence in the skies that followed for days to come.

We are a resilient people. After 9/11 we came together in a way that was entirely unique. We didn’t allow politics or religion or status or wealth or whatever else divides people to get in the way of our sorrow and healing.

But time, distance and everyday distractions since the terrorist attacks have allowed us to forget to remember. We need to remember.

One small way you can commemorate this anniversary is to climb out on the right side of the bed. Spend a minute appreciating the things around you. And if you have a hundred bad things going on in your life, revel in the fact that you are alive to handle them. Keep things in perspective.

My Day in NYC on 9/11

It’s hard to believe it’s been a decade since the world as we knew it – one in which terrorism was scarcely given much thought – was turned upside down.

A native Hoosier, I had moved to Connecticut three years prior to the attacks and commuted daily to my job in New York City. These are my personal recollections from that day.

… Many of us went to the windows that pointed south toward the World Trade Center. It was one thing seeing it on TV, but to look out and see firsthand the large plumes of smoke was completely surreal.

Unease was officially setting in throughout the office. 

My mind was playing what-ifs and drifting to my two recent visits to the Twin Towers complex in as many weeks: One for pleasure – shopping at the vast underground center – and the other a breakfast business meeting at the Marriott hotel, which sat between both towers and was connected to them….

Full story here.